Saturday, June 28, 2008

Femtosecond Laser

Take a moment, a minute (or so), to reflect on what is real-time for you. When is now now? Depending on what we are applying the timescale for, we talk about real-time data. In case of the Indian Ocean tsunami, data collected every 10-15 min would be sufficient for issuing a warning, whereas for a tsunami warning in the Mediterranean we need data every 1-3 min. Then it is called real-time. But this is far from real if we look at the requirement for GPS data where sub-seconds is what we need to produce the quality of satellite navigation we want.

Now, dwell a few seconds on femtosecond, and feel free to simulateously think about what a nanometer is. This is then the real-time of a Fabulous Femtosecond Laser. No less - or should I say - No More...

(A femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 32 million years.)

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PlanetBye

The Science Antenna

Credit: NRAO/AUI and J. Hibbard

PlanetBye is a blog run by Bente Lilja Bye aka Stellare. PlanetBye covers mainly scientific topics but also completely random topics like art, social media, personal ramblings etc. The posts on this blog are generally short with links to further reading and sources of information. Clicking on images is encouraged.